Revelations in Darkness
by cellardoor3
Summary: Sirius has an identity crisis.


Sometimes Sirius likes to take long walks. Especially in the fall when something lies just under the threshold of the atmosphere, something expectant and singing like a prophecy or a sonnet, something that tastes soft and smells spicy. He likes to walk backwards out into the street until Grimmauld Place is just barely in sight. He looks at it and almost laughs, realizing how far away and insignificant it all is. It's as if he can see into the future, stare into its eye like one of Peter's muggle kaleidoscopes, and watch the clumsy metamorphosis of time. He knows while he grins at his shrinking, melancholy house that it is going to become a place made of ephemeral memory, coming and going quickly like a breath of winter air, sharp when inhaled but exhaled fully like gasping, emerging like smoke. The feeling warrants a run-on sentence.  
  
Then he continues down the black-tar road. Rocks dig into his bony, bare feet because he always takes these walks on a whim, glancing out through the curtains and suddenly saying, sometimes aloud, 'oh. look at that.' Only during the walks can Sirius allow himself to abandon his teenage boy's life and become abstract, maudlin, "deep." He winds down paths of abused logic until he reaches a point where he either cannot stand the pressure of his faraway visions or chuckles at how ridiculously serious he takes it all. Today though, on the cusp of winter, neither reaction will be in occurrence. (Later, when he is old before his time and alone with his thoughts, both will.)  
  
But now Sirius is exposed, barefoot in the chill and realizing he is gay. He is exposed, barefoot and in the dark when he realizes he is gay and attracted to Remus.  
  
Sirius, despite his name, hates the blackness of night. It's a very cliché thing, to be afraid of the dark, but then so is having an identity crisis.  
  
In the darkness, it is hard to avoid things.  
  
The problem, Sirius knows, is that he is not ready. Not ready to give up being strong and admired by all of the female gender, not ready to give up wrestling matches with James and unashamed nudity in the boys dormitory, to regale stories about huge tits to the awe of Peter and the disapproval of Evans, not ready for the uncomfortable silences, and half-smiles, and coughs, the raging and yelling and alienation, not ready to be ostracized and examined and treated like an outsider, not ready for the purple line that will be painted between himself and the rest of the world, not ready for being alone, being scared. The truth is, Sirius is not ready to give up his childhood for some scary semblance of adult understanding and sex. Sex. What is that to him? Whisperings of embarrassment and faked arrogance. He does not want to give up companionship and camaraderie and comfort for makeup and a bent wrist and /gods help me/ touching other men without irony. He is sure, for all Remus's calm, polite smiling, he will grimace and be horrified to hear that Sirius fucking loves him for Merlin's sake! That goes beyond anything Gryffindor boys can accept, even quiet ones who read for fun.  
  
Sirius looks around, tries to find some sign, a place or an event, perhaps, that brought on this epiphany, but nothing comes. It is unfair how trivial and at the same time utterly unthinkable this is to the rest of the planet. In a single moment everything and everyone has changed, yet stayed the same. Those women living in the clean houses around his, leaning around their laundry and hissing, they used to seem harmless and vaguely amusing in their frivolous gossip. Now he imagines he is the frivolous subject of their talk. "Have you seen that strange boy lately? I hear he's a homosexual!" Even the word evokes a visceral reaction of disgust.  
  
He supposes he should be used to it by now, disgust. His mother often dishes out insults of that nature. It seems stupid that 'homosexual' will be worse than 'filth' and 'wretch,' but it is. He does not want to hear it come out of her.  
  
He wants to run, he wants to go home and hide, he wants to fly to Remus's house and kiss him on the lips and stick his tongue deep into his throat and make him take off that ridiculous cardigan to expose so much skin. He wants to cry like the sissy boy he has become. Instead he stands in the cold, and stares, and breathes. He realizes the air has changed from subtle to harsh and now his lungs can't take it. He stumbles a bit towards home.  
  
Why is this so hard to take? He doesn't understand.  
  
Suddenly, as if time has begun speeding like the headlights on the Hogwarts Express, Sirius has found his way back to the house and it is big and looming and close. He no longer has the ability to see into the future, only the endless, black uncertainty of the present. Trapped. Trapped like an animal. He walks inside, longing for the warm safety of a blanket, of his own space, his room, but a door is open and his mother's shadow shoots out from the cracks.  
  
"Sirius."  
  
Her voice is even, low, foreboding. Sirius is too tired from the waiting to delay this confrontation, whatever it is. Still, the undercurrent of terror in his heart keeps crashing like waves in a hurricane.  
  
He throws his body towards the kitchen. It's not full of the stark light you'd associate with rooms such as this one. Instead it is muted and a sort of hazy indigo.  
  
And there she sits.  
  
She is calm, hands flat on the table and resting on either side of a piece of parchment. He cannot see her face. It makes er seem evanescent, ghost-like. Her dress swishes a bit from the open window where a full moon shines and the pre-snow cold blows in. Sirius feels as if he's in a bad muggle movie and is about to be stabbed with a large farming tool.  
  
"Yes, mother."  
  
Suddenly, she glares up at him. Her eyes are like the black marbles in a Chinese Checkers set. Sirius looks away, feels himself shake. How terribly pathetic.  
  
It's just all so unreal.  
  
"You've received a letter."  
  
"Is that what that parchment is?" His voice has lost its usual caustic tone, but the exchange is familiar, like the nervous habit of tapping one's fingers or twirling one's hair.  
  
"Come here."  
  
He does not move. A moment passes. Then she strikes like a snake, grabbing him by the ear and pulling him towards her. If he is taller than the Black Matriarch, he does not know it now.  
  
"Potter." Her spittle is in his ear.  
  
"How dare you." Her whisper cuts across his skin. He's shocked to find her breath warm when all the blood that runs through her is so cold.  
  
"To coexist with such trash is bad enough, to make yourself intimate with it is nothing short of criminal. You know nothing of propriety, of duty to your very being. You are just a careless, ignorant child." She gives his ear a jerk.  
  
He swallows. "Better a child with James than a Black with you."  
  
She laughs at him.  
  
"Do not flatter yourself with the ridiculous notion that you will be happier out there with those idiotic muggle-lovers than in here with your terrible, unfair, cruel mummy." She says the words with condescending venom. "Such naiveté is beneath even you, dearest."  
  
Another jerk and, "The world is far crueler than I, and you are severing yourself from the one thing that can keep you safe from it."  
  
She releases him swiftly and leaves the room.  
  
Like a shocked robin Sirius stands with his mouth hanging open, hair disheveled, eyes unblinking. He is alone and empty in the darkness.  
  
He waits. For a revelation, for help, for a breakdown, for anything. Nothing comes.  
  
Then he turns, goes to the front door and walks into the street barefoot, not watching his house disappear. He extends an arm and the purple blob that is the Knight Bus pulls up to the road. "Where to?" a man asks.  
  
He thinks for a moment about frantic kisses and kind eyes and acceptance. His earlobe aches, and behind him, the naked trees bear down heavily.  
  
"To Godric's Hollow. To the Potters."  
  
Another day, maybe. When he is not so raw and cowardly. Remus is patient, and he will wait.


End file.
